Tag Archives: Special advisers

Partygate and the special advisers’ code of conduct: lessons for the new Downing Street Chief of Staff

Posted on by

Following the publication of Sue Gray’s report update, the Prime Minister announced his intention to reform the Downing Street machine. Robert Hazell, author of an authoritative study of the way special advisers work, argues that this presents an opportunity to revise the code of conduct that regulates their behaviour, and that incoming Chief of Staff Steve Barclay would be wise to take it.

Towards the end of his statement in the House of Commons on 31 January Boris Johnson said that he would ‘sort out what Sue Gray rightly calls the “fragmented and complicated” leadership structures of Downing Street’. He undertook to do two things:

  • create an Office of the Prime Minister, with a Permanent Secretary to lead Number 10.
  • review the civil service and special adviser codes of conduct to make sure that those codes are properly enforced.

Three days later Munira Mirza, the PM’s Head of Policy, resigned, swiftly followed by the resignations of Dan Rosenfield, the PM’s Chief of Staff, Martin Reynolds, Johnson’s Principal Private Secretary, and Jack Doyle, director of communications. On 5 February it was announced that the Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay was to be the new Chief of Staff. This blog is addressed to him, and the new Permanent Secretary in Number 10, as they consider what changes might be required to the Special Advisers’ Code of Conduct.  It draws upon the research done for a book by Ben Yong and myself, Special Advisers: Who they are, what they do, and why they matter, a year-long project including over 100 interviews with ministers, special advisers and senior officials.

The first point to make is that under the Ministerial Code and the Special Advisers’ Code of Conduct it is the PM who is responsible for the special advisers in No 10.  That is clearly spelled out in paragraph 3.3 of the Ministerial Code, and paragraph 9 of the Code of Conduct, which contain identical wording:

The responsibility for the management and conduct of special advisers, including discipline, rests with the Minister who made the appointment.

The Ministerial Code goes on to say:

Individual Ministers will be accountable to the Prime Minister, Parliament and the public for their actions and decisions in respect of their special advisers.

And the Code of Conduct states:

It is also the appointing Minister’s responsibility to ensure that their special adviser(s) adhere to this Code of Conduct.

With the previous paragraph in the Code of Conduct reminding Special Advisers that:

Special advisers are bound by the standards of integrity and honesty required of all civil servants as set out in the Civil Service Code.

So there is no wriggle room here.  If special advisers in Number 10 have fallen below the required standards of integrity and honesty, the PM is responsible; and the PM is accountable to parliament and the public for their conduct. But the second point to make is that although the PM may be ultimately responsible, to expect him to look after the management of all of his special advisers is completely unrealistic. The PM is an exceptionally busy person.  So it is a responsibility which must be delegated: the rest of this blog considers, to whom.  Should the management and conduct of special advisers be the responsibility of the Cabinet Secretary, the Permanent Secretary, or the Chief of Staff?

Continue reading →

Can Dominic Cummings defy the political laws of gravity?

Posted on by

meg_russell_2000x2500.jpgRecent news has been dominated by Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Durham. As a serial rule-breaker, he seems intent on flouting the maxim that ‘when the adviser becomes the story, the adviser must go’. But with MPs returning today, other fundamental political rules may not be so easily broken, writes Meg Russell. All Prime Ministers depend on their backbenchers for support and, with Conservative MPs in open revolt over Cummings, Johnson’s backing for him may yet become untenable. In the Westminster system MPs are ultimately in charge, and there are ways in which they could assert their position.

The Prime Minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings doesn’t like to follow the rules. That’s not necessarily a statement on his lockdown-breaking trip to Durham – disdain for established rules, and specifically for conventional wisdom that can’t be directly enforced, is what Cummings has long been known for. For some, it’s seen as part of his ‘genius’. From flying a giant inflatable white elephant over the north-east during a referendum that destroyed Labour’s plans for English regional devolution, to the audacious ‘£350 million a week’ for the NHS on the Vote Leave battlebus, to the long-planned ‘people versus parliament’ election of 2019, his boundary-stretching has often proved a winning formula, and delivered for Boris Johnson.

Cummings has long shown particular disdain for traditional political institutions, and their old ways of doing things. He’s well-known for wanting to pursue radical reform of the civil service. Conservative Brexiteer MP Steve Baker, who was among the first to call for him to quit, credits Cummings with Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament for five weeks, which was overturned in the Supreme Court. That move, like several others associated with Cummings, indicated his view that conventions, or the ‘accepted way of doing things’ count for nothing, while all that matters is the letter of the law. Other examples include suggestions to ‘pack’ the House of Lords with hundreds more Brexit-supporting peers, or to advise the Queen not to sign a rebel bill into law. Indeed ‘Downing Street sources’ went even further late last year, suggesting that Johnson might refuse to abide by a law passed by parliament. Continue reading →

Light and shadows: the RHI scandal and the temptations of secrecy

Posted on by

worthy

The RHI inquiry in Northern Ireland has led to concerns about a record ‘void’ that has left room for doubt and suspicion. Ben Worthy argues that the lack of a record might aid political deniability, but means that politicians also can’t be truly exonerated when accused of wrongdoing.

Marilyn Stathern, in her famous article on the ‘Tyranny of transparency’, asked: ‘what does visibility conceal’?  While openness can shed light on some areas, it can also create shadows and shade to hide in. One of the biggest fears for transparency campaigners is that openness will create an opposite and equal reaction. Instead of letting in the light, could freedom of information laws, open meetings or open data lead to officials and politicians trying to hide from them, or even fight them? Could it create what’s called a ‘chilling effect’, whereby officials and politicians bury their decisions elsewhere?

Finding any firm evidence for resistance, avoidance or concealment is notoriously difficult. It could take place in numerous ways, whether avoiding questions or requests, keeping records and decisions off paper, or using non-official emails or networks like WhatsApp. It’s hard to prove a negative, that something isn’t happening and, if avoidance done well, it should stay hidden. Only the most incompetent or inept are likely to be caught.

A few concrete examples have surfaced. We have had flashes of an apparent ‘chilling’ in the Trump White House and closer to home with Michael Gove using a private email address for public business in 2012 (as urged by his then adviser Dominic Cummings). More worrying was the evidence in Scotland in 2018 that some parts of government were engaged in ‘deliberate delaying tactics and requests being blocked or refused for tenuous reasons’. But are these isolated cases or the tip of an iceberg of systematic resistance? Studies have come to varying conclusions and a select committee in 2012 concluded that there was no firm evidence.

However, it now looks as though transparency campaigners’ worst nightmare has come to pass in Northern Ireland’s RHI scandal, as detailed in Sam McBride’s new book Burned. The RHI scandal, as the later Inquiry FAQ explains, concerns ‘the non-domestic renewable heat incentive… a financial incentive for businesses to move away from non-renewable sources of energy’. However, the FAQ goes on, ‘how the scheme came about in the form in which it was adopted, how it has been operated and the possible financial consequences of the scheme have become the source of considerable public concern’. You can see the background here and a timeline. Continue reading →

Challenges to good government in Northern Ireland: charting a future course

Posted on by

alan_rialto2-1The first part of this blog looked at Northern Ireland’s troubled experience with government without ministers for the last year and a half; while the Renewable Heat Incentive Inquiry offered colourful but not uplifting revelations about the way it had been conducted under devolution; and Westminster’s conduct of its responsibilities was widely questioned. Alan Whysall asks what lies behind these problems?

A lack of interest in good government and public policy has long been part of the Northern Ireland political culture. The dialogue in politics and the media has always readily reverted to the traditional issues – and more now that the parties are not constrained by the need to work together.

Partly, this illustrates the seriousness of the political and community divide that politics must seek to bridge. But the reflection of that divide in the structure of politics in Northern Ireland also means that no alternative government is on offer during elections, so misconduct in government is harder for the electorate to sanction. If the great priority of most electors is to support their community’s champion against the other side, the detail of the champion’s conduct in government gets lost. Continue reading →

Challenges to good government in Northern Ireland: all shapes and sizes of icebergs

Posted on by

alan_rialto2-1With no ministers in charge since March 2017, public administration in Northern Ireland faces serious challenges. Civil servants have been attempting to keep things running, but on collapsing legal foundations. A public Inquiry has raised issues about competence, commitment and propriety in the old devolved government. There is little energy behind restoration of devolved government, and little lead from London. The lack of attention to good government, suggests Alan Whysall, is a serious weakness in Northern Ireland political culture that must be tackled. The first part of this blog outlines the current challenges; the second, what might be done about them.

There is a side of Northern Ireland that revels in its disasters. A whole quarter of Belfast is after all named after the Titanic, rather than the many Harland and Wolff ships that did not sink. So there was resentment when the Guinness Book of Records recently denied Northern Ireland’s claim to have gone for longer than anyone else without a government (on grounds of Westminster’s ultimate ability to intervene).

There has been no government at all as respects devolved matters since January 2017. The position is worse than in most states ‘without government’, including Guinness’ reigning champion Belgium, which have had ministers exercising caretaker functions. Northern Ireland has a legal void.

The larger political stakes around the collapse of devolution and profound disagreement over Brexit have been outlined in earlier pieces. They have continued to worsen. The focus of this blog is issues of governance – which however bear closely on future prospects of sustaining political progress. Continue reading →